Friday, May 22, 2009

Poetexting

No, not sexting, which has been the big thing in the local high schools, but poetexting. Sort of like an ultra modern Haiku. What is the most beautiful, haunting, exquisite, raw, expression you can create in 140 characters or less.

I want to hit this on a second side though, too.

Communication is key.

Key to everything in life. It gets you the basics, a correct order at the drive through, the ability to read the menu, get a job, have and use currency, have and maintain friendships and all the other things that are so obvious I could fill pages with them.

It's a crazy thing though, this techno driven world we live in. We're texting and IM-ing and Tweeting and blogging and all that other stuff, but we're often really not communicating and we're not gaining from all this modern technology. We should be using it to our advantage, right, we are the "superior species" after all or so I've been told.

Anyway.

For example, I'll admit, I'm a Facebook junkie. It entertains me. I love to read all the little status updates and it makes me feel a lot closer to some of my real life friends that I don't get a chance to see in person or spend much real life time with, but, it is very rare that we are able to have an actual online real time exchange of conversation.

In a way, it's great that we are able to exchange so many one-liners and have so much electronic small talk. It builds a great level of comfort and opens the door to build some real trust and then someday a deeper level of honesty and openness. Authenticity I like to call it. I love to know a person deeply, to have them feel that they can share the innermost things of their hearts with me. It is a tremendous privilege and something that drives me to continue on in creating and maintaining relationships.

That said, I think we should be looking at how to use this technology to our advantage in our relationships. Not only our casual friendships and our best friends, but with our partners. It can be the thing that keeps the link strong, especially in this world of working continuous hours, always being on the run. Think of how often you find yourself getting to the end of a week and realizing you haven't had a "real" conversation with your partner all week. Or that you're trying to keep a relationship on solid ground but you and your partner are much more like roommates as you rush past each other and collapse into bed every night too exhausted to even say goodnight.

It happens. Even in the best relationships. The ones that look rock solid on the outside, may still be at a crumbling point on the inside. It's all about communication.

So, for today, I'll offer up a little bit of personal communication.

The Mr. and I have always been writers. Long ago we passed spiral notebooks back and forth in the halls between classes. Then he went ahead and graduated--the nerve--and took off to another state to attend college. I'll confess, we both wrote letters to each other. Every day.

Later in the early years of our marriage when travel for work was at an all time high, we used email to our advantage. There was a constant flow back and forth.

Now, we've moved on to texting.

Here's what it looks like.

The Mr. Good morning love. I hope you slept well.

Hey Mom Sleep is but a fairy tale dried up with the dew by the dawning of the sun.

The Mr. That's good. That's real good. I'm guessing that...a Diet Coke in the morning mist is a salve on the scars of the destructiveness of the darkness

Hey Mom I'm about to drink my own coffee. Pray for me.

Part of this exchange is only funny if you know that I make the worst coffee in the whole world and often when The Mr. travels he will premake coffee for me. All I have to do is take it out of the freezer and put it into the pot and add the water. This week we were joking around about Starbucks and so the premade packets were overlooked. I was left to my own destruction, I mean my own devices. And so I'm having coffee this morning, and it's keeping my eyes open, but it's sure not good coffee.

Find your communication pattern and embrace it. If you're a phone call person, stick to it and keep at it. If you're an emailer, do that. If you need to do most of your communication in person--the ultimate I think--make it happen. The people, the relationships are worth it.

Okay, so here's your holiday weekend challenge. Try out some poetexting. It's easier than it looks. Take a deep breath. Write the words that lurk in your heart and then let them go.